


Bang goes another year

by suddenrain



Category: Blur (Band)
Genre: Gen, Magic, Not Shippy, Out of Body Experiences, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16418381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suddenrain/pseuds/suddenrain
Summary: A creaking sound made him jump out of his skin. He turned around and his eyes widened as the door opened on a young short-haired woman. She was dressed in a long flower printed skirt and was holding a white ceramic tray. Hazel... Hazel from at least forty years ago.





	1. The Boogieman

It was Halloween night and the red moon rose over the Highlands in the milky sky. There was music, laughter and smiles all around. In a magnificent hollow of greenery that had only ever known the pounding of rainstorms and sheep hooves, thistles and orchids were being crushed under the rubber boots of thousands of excited revellers who were ready to attend one of the best concerts of their lives.

 

In the midst of this agitation, a man sat motionless, his head bowed, deep in thought. The sweat evaporating from his back formed a cloud that mixed with the smoke of his joint. It was rising to the ceiling of the tour bus, and as it slid against the smooth surface, divided into two cascades that went back down around the man’s blurred silhouette.

 

He did not understand why he was feeling so off. It did not exactly resemble the usual stress that would grip his heart before every big show. Right now he seemed to have a sort of background noise in his head that was diverting him from the now. He chuckled as he tried to picture how gloomy he was probably looking, all curled up there in the shadows, his zombie makeup already dripping a little along his temples. He had to get out of this smoky bus as soon as possible or he was going to go insane. Before he stood up, he looked at his watch and sighed angrily when he realised it had stopped ticking. He could not believe it was happening again. The third watch he had bought in a month! What kind of bad luck was that? He guessed it was a sign for him to stop wearing watches and to check the time on his new smartphone instead.

 

Outside, the living dead was beginning to put some woolen sweaters on. The winding mud paths between the tents glowed with smiling pumpkins, and a Chinese lantern was drifting in the cool wind. Witches were clicking glasses at the homemade beer stand while further down the valley, a circle had formed around a Frank N. Furter lookalike who was making a fire staff spin at a bewildering speed. Damon should have felt at home in this twisted and childish world. But something ... He could not put his finger on it, but he felt that something was trying to catch him, to tear him off the surface of Earth and drag him into-

 

A suspicious heat was spreading on the back of his neck. He turned to the line of bushes that marked the boundaries of the festival site, frowning over his blue wolf-dog eyes. A wild instinct was coming back to him in puffs. He began to lurk towards the bushes. His nerves were electrified by the sound of branches cracking under his shoes. His hand moved a curtain of heather to the side and he narrowed his eyes, assailed by the chaotic patterns of dark foliage. Something or someone was staring at him, wanting to hurt him. He shook his head disapprovingly, making a low noise in the back of his throat. Having mild paranoid tendencies was alright up until it started to interfere with the focused mindset that was necessary for a concert to run smoothly. He stepped back and left the bushes behind, choosing to return to civilisation.

 

When he stepped onstage and saw, from the corner of his eye, a particularly bouncy Seye, looking terrific in his skeleton costume, winking at him playfully as he was adjusting the strap of his bass, the anguish that had decided to haunt Damon’s mind a few minutes earlier drowned in the wave of rumbling energy that rushed into his chest, only waiting to be poured over the crowd through his loving and powerful singing. He could not help but smile at the sight of this ocean of people in scary disguises, raising their hands to heaven and screaming his name. He felt worshipped. Oh, he definitely was in his element.

 

After a few songs, his blood was flowing with adrenaline and a wide smile was plastered on his face. He moved closer to the bush of outstretched arms that grew in front of the stage and took pleasure in seeing dozens of eyes captivated by the show, his show, watching his flaming body writhing in the crash of vibrations, swirling in the aggressive colours of the spotlights. Their euphoric tears reflected the blinding light that magnified his own madness. He touched the swollen, undulating ball, watching how it reacted to his caress. He was amazed when it seemed to open like a flower, inviting him in. At that moment he only had one desire: to dive in, to hug its curves, to be devoured by it. But the show had to go on.

 

As Damon was about to step back from the seduced crowd with a knowing grin, a hand grabbed his wrist, taking his breath away. It was colder than an Icelandic blizzard and the grip was surprisingly strong. Damon tried to hail Smoggy so that he could take care of this over-enthusiastic fan, but no sound came out of his mouth. The syncopated rhythm of 19-2000 seemed to fade away like the sirens of an ambulance rolling at full speed and the singer's ears began to buzz. The hand pulled Damon towards the pit, planting its nails into flesh, and he found himself face to face with a gas mask with eyes glowing like embers.

 

The thing was staring at him. The thing wanted to hurt him. Unbearable coldness was rising in Damon’s arm and everything was sinking into silence. An evil darkness was gnawing on his senses. He could still vaguely hear some people shrieking in the front row, but could not see their faces at all. The only thing he could see were the two nightmarish red discs. He knew he needed to fight back. This fact he felt more strongly than terror, and this drove him to struggle like a wild beast despite the paralysis that was gaining his limbs. He began to flail around, panting like a dog, but the hand would not let him go. His brain was screaming for more oxygen. He was telling himself not to quit fighting, and kept pulling back with all his might until the vice grip finally loosened. Damon let out a cry of victory as sound and vision suddenly came back to him in a thunderous explosion. He felt himself falling backwards and felt the back of his skull soften against the stage as a puddle spread around his head to form a sticky scarlet halo. Everything went black again.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @gimmespacebrain and @robin1315 (on tumblr) for proofreading this chapter!


	2. Hazel

Damon woke up in a cocoon of light. The blanket enveloping him smelled of fresh bread and on his cheeks floated the purple fragrance of incense. He felt like he had just woken up from a dream, because he had that weird but familiar feeling of being out of breath at the edge of a precipice, while being unable to remember if he had just run. With a long sigh, he stretched as much as he could to try to shake off the numbness that weighed on his limbs. The biting freshness of the sheets that were wrapped around his legs made him realize the unusual warmth of his body. He frowned, straightened up and pressed a hand against his sweaty forehead. Fever. Feeling quite irritated, he brought his knees to his chest and let his chin rest on them, eyes still shut.

 

In the distance snored the wind on the moorland. At least he liked to imagine it. His mind, still half asleep, was flying over vast, lush valleys. He was picturing an abbey blackened by patches of lichen, standing on a white cliff that was licked by the waves... And, perhaps, in the distance, the nasal whine of a bagpipe. Or was it too cliché? Some said the best artists were those who managed to create the best clichés, Damon thought, nodding his head sleepily.

 

 

The breeze was making a shutter bang against a wall, somewhere near. Where was he? If he focused, he could hear two melodies that merged, intertwining like vines. First, there were birds singing, joyful chirps that in his mind looked like pollen that floated in the morning air to then settle on the wet grass, forming a sort of pointillist painting, yellow on green. Then, there was a richer and more powerful sound, as hard and rough as ebony. A black man was singing. By enormous effort, Damon half-opened his eyelids. His long lashes were like window bars in front of his eyes. His heart started beating faster. He could not recognise the room he was in.

 

The dim lighting was turning furniture into evil figures. He jumped out of bed, anxiety bubbling in his stomach, galloping in his veins. The window. That's where the voice was coming from, singing an old soul tune that he thought he recognised, although he wasn’t so sure. He was holding his breath as his hands brushed against the linen curtains. When he opened them with a violent flick of his wrists, what he had sensed took shape before his eyes. Outside, no festival tents clinging on to wind-blown moors, but charming brown brick Victorian houses under the morning sun. Completely stunned by this sight, Damon quickly opened the window and sniffed the air that was heavy with forgotten scents. Never in his most realistic dreams had he seen his childhood street with such precision before. His gaze got lost in the blue blue skies. Usually in his memories, they were tinged with a nostalgic, Polaroid yellow.

 

His eyes stopped on a man who was smoking a cigarette while leaning against a Bedford TK utility vehicle that was parked across the street. He was dressed in beige bell bottoms, an orange and red wide-collared button up shirt and his face was hidden under the shadow of an incredibly wide afro. When he saw Damon leaning out of the window, he gave him the biggest smile. Large shiny teeth and quite a few holes, white and black alternating like a piano keyboard. Damon’s head began to spin. He clutched at the window sill to keep himself from falling and stared at his hands as he tried to control his erratic breathing. Small, white, smooth hands. The veins and crevices that made up their topography had simply disappeared overnight.

 

A creaking sound made him jump out of his skin. He turned around and his eyes widened as the door opened on a young short-haired woman. She was dressed in a long flower printed skirt and was holding a white ceramic tray. Hazel... Hazel from at least forty years ago.

 

"Mum?"

 

He shuddered as he heard the shrill voice that had come out of his mouth.

 

"Go back to bed, sweetheart. I brought you some tea and scones. "

 

As if under a spell, every fiber of his body relaxed as he heard his mother's reassuring tone. He walked back to his bed, staggering on his little feet like a sleepwalker. His mother smiled at him as she set the tray on the edge of the bed and when he was all tucked in, she began to run her hand over his forehead, her fingers passing through his blond bangs. Damon inhaled, exhaled deeply. He knew he had already lived this moment. He was back in 1970s Leytonstone, during a school day when he had had the flu. He did not remember the details, nor how old he must have been exactly.

 

"Mum..." he murmured softly. “Mum, I think I might have time travelled. "

 

This made Hazel snort as she lowered the cup of tea she was about to drink from.

 

"Oh really? How do triceratops look like up close?”

 

"Mum, I'm serious.” He mumbled again.

 

"Oh, but I believe you are, love. Your fever is quite serious as well. "

 

Damon turned away from his mother and wrapped himself in the blanket, his eyes and nose being the only part of his body in contact with the open air. The black man outside was no longer singing. Now a wide trapeze of light was spreading onto the floor, and the dust was dancing in the air.

 

Scrutinising his surroundings was like cycling after years of not having touched a bike. Every once-forgotten item that entered his field of vision threw him off at first, but almost immediately after, gave off a feeling of familiarity and balance. A white feather, some gravel and seashells were lying around on the bedside table, which was a funny-looking red plastic cube that had been designed by his father. There were some books on the shelves, he could recognise the colourful cover of Alice in Wonderland next to a shiny music box -he could almost hear the A Little Night Music theme playing by just looking at it- and his old stuffed tiger was sitting there, head tilted to the side. Postcards were stuck all over the grey walls, Dover, Blackpool, Nottingham, and in a corner of the room, a wooden sword was leaning against a horse with wheels, next to a tiny xylophone. It was all coming back to him at once, and the joy and nostalgia were like strong slaps on both cheeks at the same time. He wanted to touch and feel everything, but at the same time, he was scared that all these things would topple into dust if he dared to lay so much as a finger on any of them.

 

Yet, an object on one of the shelves was not familiar to him at all. At first, it did not really bother him, but as all the other elements of his room found their place in the puzzle of his memory, he felt a growing annoyance towards this recalcitrant piece. With a determined look, Damon got out of his bed again, walked up to the shelf and stretched out his little body to reach the object. He had forgotten what it was to live in a world of giants. Suddenly, the soles of his feet slid against the floor and left it. The wallpaper began to move, scrolling before his eyes: he was a rocket taking off, and now he was levitating for the first time in decades. He felt his mother's arms around his waist, holding him firmly. Her warm hands, covered with paint, were crossing on top of his belly. He did not understand why, among all the things he had just witnessed, being lifted up by his mother was what was bringing tears to his eyes.

 

"What did you want to take?” her sweet voice whispered into his ear.

 

He did not answer, too upset to find the words, and too frightened at the thought of hearing his old, innocent voice again, the voice that the rest of the world did not know. He just pulled out the leather covered book that had caught his attention before his mother put him back down. He took a bit of time to decipher the title that was written in Gothic letters: "Myrddin Wyltt's family book of sorcery" Thrilled by his discovery, he began to leaf through the thick volume, as his mother silently left the room.

 

The first page, of which he liked the granular texture of parchment, was covered with strange half-erased geometric symbols, including several ornate pentagrams. It reminded him of the archives he had consulted to compose his opera about the mage Dr. Dee. Then, there were long paragraphs of indecipherable runes. The ink, the writing, and even the alphabet that were used seemed to evolve throughout the book, as if it had gone from hand to hand, from era to era in order to be completed. He felt more and more excited to have this book in his hands, its mysterious aura warming his palms. He could almost hear an orchestra playing an epic theme about the adventures of the sorcerers to which this grimoire had belonged. After a while, he recognised the Latin alphabet and a form of Shakespearean English. Of Myrddin Wyltt, he read: “He was the most wondrous wizard of the isles. That gent did manage to turn ten pieces of bread into a pile of gold.”

 

A few pages later, everything was typed on a normal paper, in modern English. A picture was stuck in the top left corner, a black and white ID photo of a schoolgirl hiding behind heavy brown bangs, the hint of a smile dancing on her lips.

 

"Hazel A Dring. Divination. Healing and protection powers.” was written underneath it.

 

Damon read these few words again and again, refusing to acknowledge the excited hopping of the irrational part of his mind that had already jumped to conclusions. This whole thing was taking him back to his wiccan phase, which had involved a lot of bell ringing, candle lighting, prayers to the moon...and perplexed side-glances from his close friends. 

The paragraph that followed was a laconic list of dates followed by wacky but strangely concise descriptions: "1956: first manifestation of her powers. Saw the future at the bottom of her bowl of chocolate milk.” Now, what was that supposed to mean? Shivers ran up Damon's back as he read, a few lines later: "1968: Prevented her own miscarriage. Protection spell cast on the child ".

 

The next page was blank, except for a blue ink inscription in a sloped, neat handwriting: "Two children without gift. End of the lineage. "

 

Damon’s mind began to race with thousands of questions. Although he was strongly attracted to the occult, he could hardly believe what that book seemed to suggest. "There’s no way we are real witches, this is crazy.” Part of him thought this was yet another one of his mum’s artistic lunacies. Or perhaps this book was from his own invention, well, that of his subconscious anyway. Like the top that never stops spinning, this insane book was the proof that he was lucid dreaming, the proof that all of this was only a kind of super-realistic illusion.

 

He remembered a book that had struck him long ago, a non-fiction written by a neurologist named Oliver Sacks, he believed. In one chapter, one of the patients, who had suffered a stroke, was constantly hearing songs from her childhood in Ireland, which she thought she had forgotten. They were reproduced so accurately that she first thought they were coming out of a radio before realising that they were the product of her brain. Was he also the victim of an hallucination? Had he hit his head? Had he been drugged? As much as he tried, he could not remember where he was and what he was doing before he ended up here. Again, this feeling of an abyss in front of him, this time accompanied by an unpleasant sensation of nausea.

 

"Is this old dusty book any good, darling?"

 

Hazel had come back. She was now holding a little papier mâché box in the palm of her right hand. Her face was radiating with kindness. Damon remembered how the neighbours used to spy on her over the hedge, probably intrigued by her bohemian beauty, as she painted in the garden, happily spreading vibrant colours on large wooden boards. Hazel sat in front of Damon and gently took the book from his hands. Under the boy’s watchful eyes, she turned the pages to the very last. Before he could try to read what was written on it, she tore it off, folded it six times with her nimble fingers, and slid it into the pocket of a tiny tweed coat that was hanging on the wall. Damon felt weirdly relieved when he watched his mother put the book back on the shelf.

 

"Hey, you look like you're feeling better! Why don’t we go and take a walk? I bet you're dying to get a breath of fresh air! " she exclaimed.

 

Choosing to ignore the cold shivers running down his spine, Damon leapt from where he was sitting and nodded excitedly, ready to explore the neighbourhood of his childhood, which memory he had come to cherish over the years.

 

He took his time to dress himself, rummaging through the depths of his old closet with delight. He chuckled at the ridiculously small size of the tee-shirts he found, and at the tacky logos he would never dare to wear nowadays. Well, if he was honest, he probably would. In his defence, he would say that he would wear them ironically. As he put on his clothes, he quickly realised he was not used to handle this small body any more. It was as frail as a bird, which was very far from the stocky built to which he was accustomed. All the things he had done with this body... all the things he had inflicted to it. So many fucking narcotics, he thought as he looked at the skin of his arms, soft as polished stone. He put on his coat while looking distractedly out the window.

 

Fried-food-smelling Fillebrook Road was swarming with head-scarfed women walking around with their toddlers. Their exalted cries made him think about a 1970s photo he had seen at the Leytonstone Museum, not so long ago. You could tell by the bunting and the balloons hanging on the trees and lampposts that it was a day of celebration, and you could see children playing musical chairs in the middle of the street. He was pretty sure he had not attended this event, but he had still tried to see if he could recognise himself among any of the kids on the picture.

 

"Wait, before we go..."

 

His mother came up to him and opened the box she had brought with her. She pulled out a necklace of glass beads and held it high above his head, as if she was going to give him a sort of sacrament. Pierced by the sun rays, the beads were casting their shimmering hues on the child's face. A smile stretched on Damon's lips at the sight of this talisman that had been so dear to him. When Hazel slipped it around his neck, Damon felt a strangely solemn atmosphere fall on his shoulders, and the room seemed to darken all of a sudden. As the pearls came into contact with the stretched skin over his collarbone, he let out a high-pitched scream. He had received what felt like an electric shock, and the world around him, like a painting under a jet of acid, began to disintegrate. In deafening silence, his mother's face twisted to the point of being unrecognisable, and before he could move a muscle, Damon was caught in a whirlwind of smoke and lightning.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much @gimmespacebrain and @robin1315 for betaing this chapter!


	3. Dust

He was floating in a music stream, caressed by voluptuous layers of sound. He wanted to stay here forever. But as he felt himself slowly emerging from the darkness, he heard the bass become less powerful, the guitar less crackling, the singing less haunting. From a fuzzy and enveloping sphere the song was turning into a clear-cut, banal line. It was not upsetting to him, not really, because by regaining consciousness he was able to realise, with a few seconds' delay, how wonderful the intangible landscape he had just crossed was. Listening to music in a daze was one of the greatest pleasures of life. He had started to smoke pot precisely in order to enhance what a song could bring to his senses.

 

Damon put a hand on his ear to discover the cold surface of headphones. Ray Davies' delightful voice was curling up against his eardrum like an old cuddly pet. His eyes fluttered open. He was lying on a sort of uncomfortable bench seat that smelled like plastic. He could recognise the curves of a tour bus ceiling above him. The air was cool and dry, and it felt like pumice stone scratching inside his sore throat. He wondered if he was finally back. Hazel's blurred image in the crack of his bedroom door came back to him and he felt a lump in his throat. As he straightened up, the beads of his necklace rolled against his skin. He looked down at his lap and began to inspect his hands, squinting as he failed to make out the details that were coated in darkness. They were normal sized. He was an adult again.

 

Damon removed the headphones and looked around. The bus was crossed by orange rays of artificial light filtering through curtains that draughts were making quiver. Long shadows stretched behind the few objects on a small PVC table on the other side of the bus corridor. There were four bottles of Bedweiser surrounded by small pools of lukewarm beer. Next to them, a nearly empty pack of Marlboro lights. Damon suddenly had the strong urge to light one up. As he got up, something fell from the bench seat with a thud, carrying the headphones in its fall. It was a yellow Sony Walkman, something he had not seen in a very long time. He picked it up and opened it, pulling out the cassette. A title was written on it with a black marker, in his own round handwriting: "Kinks - the best of the best". His hand held the cassette against his heart, which pace had accelerated at the discovery. He did not remember having dug it out of the dusty drawer in which it had probably been lying around for years. He was sure he had not brought it with him for this Gorillaz tour anyway. However, he could certainly remember having often taken refuge in the soft Englishness of these songs during another tour, many, many years ago. Four cursed numbers caught fire in his mind, lacerating his brain with their menacing light. 1992.

 

Damon looked out the window. Under the purple sky laden with stars, the bus was stopped on a motorway rest area in the middle of a desert. He could recognise the crooked, spiky shadows of Joshua trees in the distance. A few clouds of dust, lightened up by four lamp posts at each corner of the gas station, were rolling like tumbleweeds over the tar and a man was dancing in front of the small convenience store. He was heading dangerously towards the road with a staggering gait. Damon’s eyes remained glued to him until he disappeared in the dark. As he turned away from the window, he saw a movement from the corner of his eye. He turned slowly. In front of him, a mirror reflected the image of a pretty young man with an overly loose striped sweater on his thin body, ruffled short hair and dark circles under his eyes. Damon shuddered at the sight. This ambitious boy with an eternal provocative stare had borne his name more than twenty years ago. His only desire at the time had been to have it engraved on the shiny, treacherous temple of fame and recognition.

Damon did not know what to think about this, but his body instantly knew what to feel. His legs began to tremble under his weight, and he saw the young man's eyes widen, his pupils crossed by a white flash of panic.

 

"Damon! You fucker!” A voice screamed in his ear, and he was violently thrown to the ground.

 

A maniacal laugh echoed in the bus as the attacker held him down, one hand pressed against his mouth and the other clawing at his forearm. Damon, completely stunned, felt a moist breath tinged with malt tickle one side of his face, then something hot, viscous and wet made its way in the crook of his neck. He could not believe it. The nutter was licking him! Damon's blood began to tingle through his veins, and he tried throwing punches blindly until one of them hit his aggressor square on the jaw. A pair of glasses flew away and the man immediately let go of Damon. It must have been quite painful judging from the pitiful moan he let out before standing up and taking a few steps back.

 

"What the hell! It hurts like crazy, you ponce! You fucking twat!" an all too familiar voice complained.

 

Oh no.

 

Graham. The unstable and completely drunk Graham of 1992, his big brown eyes brimming with rage and disbelief and his Teenage Fanclub t-shirt reeking of beer and vodka. Damon watched as the young man ran his pointer finger over his gums and frowned when he saw that it was coated with blood. Before Damon could say a word, his friend ran out of the bus, mumbling a few more insults under his breath.

 

 

When Damon got out of the bus, the film of sweat on his forehead immediately got cooler in contact with the night air. The canopy above the gas pumps looked like a spaceship which shape stretched to the end of the horizon.   
  
He strode towards the convenience store. The thick slice of white stone looked unmistakably American. Damon could already imagine tanned truckers’ wrinkles deepening beneath phosphorescent neon lights, and smooth beige children’s faces cloned on glossy bags of fat-saturated pleasures, with their little white teeth lined up inside their mouths like products on the shelves. He passed the automatic doors and winced as he felt fans blowing a heady smell of fried food and bleach on his face. A brown-skinned man was snoring peacefully behind the cash register. It was 4am according to the Donald Duck clock hung to the wall behind him. On top of an out of order popcorn machine, a small radio was broadcasting a second-rate grunge singer’s tortured belching. Right next to it, above a grill, the smiling image of a fat, wide-eyed homemaker was presenting hot-dogs on a plate, sausages as plump and scarlet as her painted lips. She seemed happy in this ugly and motionless world. Damon wondered what kind of supernatural force had decided it was a good idea to send him back to such a depressing place. He started making his way down the maze of aisles, sandals slamming against the tiles. Still no brown mop of hair in sight.

  
  
As he walked down the soda aisle, he got distracted by the ridiculous amount of different brands American consumers needed in order to have the illusion of choice and abundance. Then again, that was nothing compared to the twenty-first century. Absorbed by his dark musings, he almost tripped over something that was lying on the floor. His toes had come into contact with what appeared to be a rather hairy thigh. He stepped back to realise that it belonged to a slender young man, all dressed in black, shorts included, lying face down on the tiled floor, legs apart. One of his fists was closed on a special issue of a science magazine about the solar system. Sitting cross-legged on his lower back, a red-haired polo-wearing man was calmly emptying a big bottle of ketchup on his victim's head, whose feeble protests and oscillations that resembled those of a fish on the verge of asphyxiation did not seem to affect in the least. Damon did not have to think very long to guess the identity of those two morons.

  
  
"I can’t believe I chose to front the stupidest band in the world.” He grumbled, but had to suppress a fond smile nonetheless.

  
  
"Damon! Is that your lovely voice that I hear? Could you please tell Ginger Satan to go fuck a drum instead of bullying me?" Alex piped up before Dave directed the ketchup jet towards his mouth, making any attempt to speak again condemned to end in a pitiful gurgling sound.

  
  
"I'm sure you've been annoying enough to lead him to such extremes.” Damon chuckled. "I'm looking for Graham. Have any of you seen him?"

  
  
"Have not. Too busy giving this poof a fresh new look.” Dave answered in a laconic tone.

  
  
He turned to Damon, a wicked grin distorting his features, and a strangely threatening glow shining in his clear eyes, as if to challenge him to try and set Alex free from his torture. It had been a long time since Damon had seen that expression on his drummer’s face, who could be considered as the calmest and wisest person in the group. It dawned on him that this was far from being just another childish prank. It looked innocent enough, but the complicity and good-natured mischief that would have made everything okay was not really there. It was faked. Dave's goal was to humiliate. They had started to treat each other like that during this dreadful tour, as they got to explore the dark side of brotherly relationships. This was not a surprising result at all, Damon thought. Take four fucked up, drunk almost-adults and lock them up for several months in a bus and you'll inevitably see their personalities generate dangerous sparks when rubbed together.  
  
1992 was eating shit morning, noon, and night, and vomiting sarcasm back. It was boredom and booze. It was a series of catastrophic concerts in godforsaken holes where they were absolutely nothing.

  
  
Dave had momentarily dropped his guard and Alex took the opportunity to gain the upper hand. He threw himself on the drummer and slapped him once on each cheek before getting up with a princely grace that certainly clashed with his fringe dripping with tomato sauce. A big drop of the liquid fell directly on the magazine he had left on the ground, right on the Sun, which caused Dave's hilarity. Damon decided he had seen enough and, after checking that Graham was not in the restrooms, he left the store.

  
  
As he walked along the road, a ball of worry settled at the pit of his stomach. The Graham he was looking for was not the one he knew now. The dam between his urges and his rational mind was still under construction, which meant he was much more prone to self-destruction.  
  
A 4x4 went past Damon, throwing gravel at his calves, and for a split second the headlights revealed a shadow that was curled up at the foot of the gas station roadside sign. Graham raised his large, vulnerable eyes towards him. A dribble of dried blood stretched from the corner of his mouth to the tip of his chin. It was like a crack on his chalky skin. Damon walked towards him carefully, as if he was trying to get closer to a wounded animal.

  
  
"Go away. You fucked up my jaw" Graham said in his soft, unsteady voice. It was muffled by the crook of his arm in which he had just buried the lower half of his face.  
  
He definitely sounded annoyed, but calm. That was a good sign. Damon replied with the gentlest tone he could manage.

  
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to."

  
He was surprised at the ease with which the apology had rolled off his tongue. Maybe coming from a time when these old stories of pride no longer mattered was helping.

Graham closed his eyes. He did not say anything for a while. Hearing his deep, regular breathing, Damon wondered if he had passed out. He sat down next to him, then let his eyes get lost in the Milky Way. An early morning orange hue was slowly soaking up the sky above the rocky mountains. In the distance, he could hear Alex and Dave sing a bawdy song as they were coming out of the store.

  
  
"I'm going to sleep here until a cowboy mistakes me for roadkill and brings me back to his family for lunch."

 

Damon laughed.

 

"I love you.” he said, simply, and flattened a hand on his friend’s back, his thumb lightly grazing a bump on his spine. It was strange to let the truth flow without any filter. Liberating. He was rarely so clear when expressing his feelings, but he felt that Graham needed to hear that.

  
  
"That's weird. You're weird."

  
He could feel his suspicious gaze burning holes at the side of his face now. A sudden feeling of irrational fear rose in his chest. Was telling him he loved him too out of character? They did say they loved each other back then. He supposed they were never too straight-forward, except when they were both really drunk. It was rarely a blunt "I love you", but more in the lines of "I like your face, cunt", "I fancy you, old queen”, or sometimes an enthusiastic “Oh, you played brilliantly on this track!". But the feeling that was flaring up behind all the layers of modesty was always, always the same. Even when they were convinced they hated each other’s guts, the strong bond between them managed to linger.

Damon stared at the Big Dipper, which was diluting in the paling sky. Something was making his stomach churn, a strong and strange disease he only seemed to catch when Graham and feelings were involved. 

  
"That's how I feel about you, you know.”

  
  
“Well, I don’t feel like I like you much these days."

 

  
"That's... That's because I'm an annoying twerp right now. I'll get better, I promise", he smiled, trying his best not to sound hurt.

 

"Right." 

  
  
"But, Graham, you’ve got to admit I’m better company than all those hillbillies. A mush of catchy jingles and Bible verses in their brains, they have."

  
  
"I just know I'm sad and homesick and I want to go home or I'll let myself get run over. Even Colchester is better than this rat hole."

  
Good old Graham and his dramatic tirades, he thought. He began to hum while tracing circular shapes on his friend’s curved back. He looked small and black, like a curled up beetle afraid of a shoe. He had not always been like that, had he?

  
"Remember when we used to go to the river? When we were just kids. We used to have so much fun.” Damon murmured, his voice warm and low.

  
  
"I don’t feed on memories." Graham lied before giving an enormous yawn.

  
  
He straightened up and let his head rest on Damon's shoulder. This almost took his breath away. He did not know why, but receiving affection from this Graham felt foreign. He tried to regain his composure, and went on a bit shakily, feeling like he was talking to himself.

  
  
"We'd go to my room, play some music. Talk about girls and art... I loved you. And I still love you with all my heart, and I'll still love you thirty years from now."

  
  
"Will you stop with that sappy nonsense!” Graham spat.

  
  
Suddenly, his reassuring warmth left Damon's side. He had stood up and was now facing the road, arms crossed, frowning as if he was thinking about an unsolvable maths problem.

 

"What, am I making you blush?” Damon joked, grinning devilishly. He loved making people flustered.

  
  
"Yes! With embarrassment. This is embarrassing. You miss her, you’re tired, so you're trying to tell yourself you love me, while we fought and called each other horrible names all week. I'm not a fucking toy." He replied through gritted teeth.

 

Sometimes interacting with Graham was like crossing a minefield. Damon's vision got blurry for a few seconds, dots of light turning into bright orange rings. He did not belong in this reality. Another car rolled by, fast blade tearing the tissues of dawn. Judging from its lenght, either a limousine or a hearse.

 

The sun had risen, but all its light could not make Graham's expression any more readable. At first glance, he seemed completely detached, but small details that Damon had learned to detect over the years told another story. It was mostly in his slightly furrowed brow and his pinched lips. Behind a veneer of indifference hid a knot of inextricable emotions that no-one, not even Graham, quite knew how to untangle. The angles of his face, sometimes soft, sometimes sharp, made him look like a stubborn child carved in marble, standing still as exterior forces pressed against him, trying to shape him, to make him grow up. They had managed to, in a way, because despite his age, a filthy, sooty sadness was already embedded in his dark irises. Damon could not help but think that when they got into their career, they were still ridiculously clueless and oversensitive kids.

  
"I'm not lying to you." he offered.

Graham’s eyes filled with what looked like a mix of disappointment and tears. He shook his head in his own exaggerated way and ran away once more, this time back to the tour bus. Damon felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him. He figured that he would end up falling asleep right here if he did not get up and go back to the bus too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @gimmespacebrain, @robin1315, @poppunkprintheth for helping me with this chapter!


	4. The Letter

When Damon got into the bus, Graham and Dave had gone to bed. Alex was alone, sprawled on the bench seat, fiddling with his bass absentmindedly. He had thoroughly washed his hair; it was now slicked back on his skull, shining like an otter's back. The magazine about the solar system was on the corner of the PVC table where the smallest amount of beer had been spilled, and crusty ketchup stains were drying on the Sun. Bathed in the dawn’s rosy glow, Alex’s face was smoother and slimmer than Damon had seen it in many years. The hollow of his cheeks looked like a canyon. Damon could not believe how different he looked. Seeing his old friends in the flesh when they were in their twenties was a totally different experience from watching old photos of the band. He felt like they were his nephews or something.

 

Not knowing what to do with his confused self, he plopped down next to him and stared at the ceiling, listening to the bass sounds hopping in the air. He was fighting against his falling eyelids, afraid that if he fell asleep, he would wake up somewhere else, in another era. A stew of unpleasant questions was bubbling inside of him. What if he were condemned to go from decades to decades for the rest of his life, never able to go back to the present? Finding himself every day without any point of reference, without the possibility of making plans, of seeing his family and his current friends ? His fingers began to drum nervously on his knees. Alex’s bass let out a dissonant chord and a terrified stupor made him shiver at the same moment. What if he never saw Suzi or Missy again? He would just go insane. And if he ended up with Justine again, what would he do? Would he have to pretend to love her to avoid changing the course of time? There was no way he would put himself through this. He did not even know if what he was living was purely virtual or if it really had an impact on his future. And there was also the possibility of different timelines, the implications of which his poor tired brain was having a hard time figuring out. The uncertainty of his situation was stressful; that was the only thing he could be sure about.

Memories flashed in his mind. He was curled up in the arms of his former girlfriend, in her house on Kensington Park Road, on a rainy Sunday morning. His cheek rubbing against the soft blue tie-dye blanket, his eyes hypnotized by entwined naked bodies glowing on the TV. Once again, he felt the weight of love, the weight of a black cat purring on his chest, a vinegary scent making his nostril shudder, and Justine’s sweet posh voice flowing like a brook in the valleys of his foggy brain, creeping through the dark corridors of his memory, rising above the roar of traffic outside. She was pronouncing his name as if she was sucking on candy, a delighted sparkle in her eyes. The memories had stopped hurting a long time ago, but what terrified him was the opportunity to be immersed in them again, to be crushed by their reality, to be able to touch an obsolete love, as palpable as the warmth and the texture of her skin, erupting from the crease between her dark eyebrows, from the playful smiles that made her beautiful jawline tense up, from the way she used to hold him, and give herself to him. He was nauseated. The sound of strings clanking against the frets died down next to him. Alex sighed and, with a stupid lopsided grin on his stupid, youthful face, said in a croaky voice:

 

"I'm bored out of my mind, my breath stinks like reblochon, and the moon seems to be laughing at me."

 

"I'm in deeper shit than you are, mate." Damon snapped, closing his eyes as hard as he could in order to erase the painful images from his retina.

 

"Come on, Graham will never stay mad at you. Just sing him a love song and he'll be yours again."

 

If only anatomy allowed Damon to roll his eyes multiple times in a row. It would be an extremely useful skill whenever Alex opened his gob.

 

"Turns out he doesn’t like sappy stuff at the moment" he replied, chewing on his thumb.

 

He was not that worried about making up with Graham anyway, feeling detached from this time and place.

 

"You should pretend that you like the punky trash he listens to. He'll blow you one for sure."

 

Damon got up and took a swig from one of the beer bottles. Alex was playing the same note again and again, staring into space, forefinger and middle finger mimicking an endless march.

 

"Do you have a song in stock for me to make a decent bass line for? I'm so bored, you have no fucking idea."

 

He was about to shake his head and tell him to go to sleep when a chord progression that had obsessed him for the past two weeks popped back in his head.

 

"Yeah, actually", he said slowly, "I've got something."

 

Working with the other members of Blur was as natural as breathing, but actually getting together to play had become increasingly difficult over the years. They had their own lives now, their own projects, and the unwholesome echo of their public mid-air explosion was still ringing in their ears and greatly affected the way they viewed the band, even if they were on very good terms. Back then however, they used to spend all their time together, clowning around as if they were stuck in a perpetual summer camp. No bad memories, just aspiring pop stars’ dreams. Well, until 1992 put their friendship to the test. Still, Damon wanted to see what he could get from this. He sang the melody that had haunted him, giddy with the excitement of being involved in the very first intertemporal musical collaboration. That sounded so brilliantly absurd. As Alex began to try playing something that would compliment the chord sequence, he wondered who he would have to credit if he came back to the present with the finished song. Alex would probably have forgotten he had provided a bass line for it, so he would have the option of stealing it. Oh, that was even better! The first intertemporal case of plagiarism. Damon knew some people who, if they had been in his situation, would not have hesitated at all.

 

Seeing Alex play for him, Damon felt a wave of affection overwhelming him and he leaned forward to plant a wet sloppy kiss on his cheek. He could feel the boy’s skin wrinkling from a smile under his lips. As he leaned back, something dropped from his trousers’ pocket to fall on Alex's crotch. It was a folded sheet of paper. Alex put his bass down against the mirror as carefully as he could so that the paper would not move from where it had landed, and stared at Damon with lustful eyes, spreading his legs wide.

 

"Come and get your paper, darling boy." He said jokingly as his hand caressed his thigh.

 

"You're a swine. **"** Damon smiled and took it with his fingertips, avoiding contact with the danger zone.

 

He unfolded the paper, stung by curiosity. The entire left edge was serrated, indicating that the page had been torn out of a book. A sheet of periwinkle writing paper was glued on it. On the lines stretched an elegant copperplate handwriting. A logo had been stamped at the bottom of the text ; its charcoal coloured lines represented a castle perched on a mountain. A mildly scratched up picture was stuck next to it. Damon opened a curtain behind him to let more light into the bus and began to read.

_"London_

_16th November 1976_

_Dear Damon,_

_As your eighth birthday came about, we thought we had to resign ourselves to the fact that the wizarding bloodline of the venerable Myrddin Wyllt had died down, and that your mother, Hazel, was its last representative. Indeed, you had not shown any magical ability, and thanks to her powers of divination, your mother was able to confirm that you would reach adulthood without differentiating yourself in any way from ordinary human beings. Our experts attributed this failed transmission to your father's non-wizard status, which must have diluted Hazel's magic in your blood, and to the exceptional circumstances of your birth, during which a dark wizard cast a spell to try to make your mother suffer a miscarriage. As your lack of gift became evident, Hazel was advised to avoid telling you about her powers, as the secrets of the world of witchcraft are more surely guarded by their members._

_Nevertheless, to our utmost surprise, Hazel contacted us a few weeks ago to tell us about a premonitory dream that totally contradicted our conclusions. She contended that powers would eventually manifest in you in the most unconventional manner, in response to an attack by a masked mage that wished for your death._

_According to her, this power would take the form of an ability to make your soul travel in time, allowing it to temporarily take refuge in previous versions of your person to avoid being annihilated by your attacker. Furthermore, her vision showed that you would come to visit her by being reincarnated in your own self as a child._

_Let us tell you that your case is exceptional and absolutely fascinating. Our experts are still trying to determine the causes of this peculiarity. One of the most plausible hypotheses for us at the moment would be that the protection spell that your mother cast on you so that you could come into the world was so powerful that when you were confronted with a mortal danger, it allowed you to take flight by making you able to use a fitting magical power._

_Although he has been missing for years, we suspect that one of your mother's old enemies, Brendan Griffiths, is the malicious spirit behind your misadventures. Here is the most recent picture of him that we own: if you see this man, we advise you to flee and hide in a safe place, whether physically or spiritually as you have just learned to. Please find enclosed a guide of sorts, written by one of our time-spells magicians, to help you master your new power._

_Best wishes,_

_The Secret Guild of the White Mages of Albion."_

 

Damon ran a hand through his hair and gripped tightly on greasy strands at the back of his head. He remembered the page that his mother had torn from the old book he had found. He could see her slip it into the pocket of his coat. Only magic, or maybe his own descent into madness, could explain that the object had found itself here, in the summer of 1992, in his trousers’ pocket.

 

He felt more and more willing to believe in the twisted story that these documents suggested was real, but it gave him the nasty feeling that he had been lied to all his life in order for these wizards to blow his mind for fun later on. It was as if he had been propelled in a fantasy novel of dubious quality. He could not pretend that it was not exhilarating: him, a witch’s son, able to travel back in time to flee evil mages! It filled him with the powerful feeling that had been the fuel of everything he had done in his youth: knowing that he was, somehow, one of a kind. He had always dreamed of living a great adventure worthy of the Arthurian cycle ; however, never in his daydreaming sessions had he pictured himself as the clueless victim of the story.

 

He heard Alex snigger. He had taken a look at the letter over his shoulder.

 

"What a load of rubbish. Did you write this? And who's that posh cunt on the picture?"

 

Damon glanced at the photo that was attached to the letter. It had been taken in a richly decorated living room, with stucco mouldings running along high walls, where faded tapestries, on which shadows of frightened deer were being chased by hunting dogs, were hung. He noticed a bunch of small white spots in the top right corner, presumably the tassels of a chandelier. A young man, not older than thirty years old, a silver velvet cape draped over his shoulder, was standing in the center of the picture, his half-closed eyes looking directly at the lens. He had olive skin, long eyelashes, bushy eyebrows, a mouth so thin it looked more like a cut and a mass of black and shiny curls framing his face. He did not look very menacing, but the satisfied curl at the corner of his lips gave him a scornful air. He did look like a posh cunt, Damon thought.

 

Another sheet of the same writing paper was glued on the back of the page. It was full of graphite runes, mysterious star shaped figures and arabesques, and Latin phrases written in brown ink. It had visibly not occurred to these so-called expert magicians that a man who had never truly been in contact with their mystical world was incapable of deciphering this magma of symbols. Damon cleared his throat and mumbled one of the sentences:

 

" _O flumen temporis, transfer me ad mare aurati anni_ ... What the hell could that mean? Hey, Alex, you took medieval french in college, right? Didn’t you learn some latin too? Alex?"

 

He noticed that his friend had left to go to the bunks at the back of the bus. Damon shrugged and read some more Latin sentences in a low voice, frowning all the while.

 

" _Decem annos antes, meus animus canebat. A vobis peto, simulacra noctis, ut reducatis me in aeram felicem._ "

 

No sooner had he uttered these enigmatic words than his whole body began to tremble, and an icy feeling flooded his skin. The light around him amplified and he saw hundreds of nebulae appear under his feet, piercing the floor. Strange patterns filled the bus all at once, surrounding him, dozens of what looked like bright green peacock butts or traveller's palms unfolding at each corner. A falcon shriek vibrated through space, and Damon was buried under an avalanche of thick blackness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you @robin1315 for proofreading this chapter!


	5. Clepsydra

Blue bleach dripping on the roundness of the eyeballs, spinning in the nostrils, splashing in the pulmonary bags...

 

It was cold on these unconscious shores, his head was heavy, floating. His hands, nonexistent. He did not know where he was - it was becoming a recurring feeling, being reborn at regular intervals – all he knew was that he was bending over. Inside of his aching back, it felt like the nested tubes of a telescope, or those of a radio antenna, were unfolding and being pulled on both sides, too hard, the metal on the verge of breaking. The tip of his ear was touching a smooth, frozen surface. He was starting to hear muffled sounds. A bass drum pedal kicking on a carpeted floor. Pressure on his eardrums, a penny falling on metal and rolling around indefinitely. Underwater trip hop. He blew some air and bubbles formed, small transparent planets with a zigzagging orbit. It would have made him smile if he had not been in his death throes.

 

Suddenly, his neck, as malleable as a soft plastic toy, was pulled out from the abyss by a life-saving claw. A warm breath spread over his face, entering his bronchi. Water drops came rushing down his forehead, slowing at the bushy ridge of his eyebrows. He heard the ragged pants of a dying beast, then realised they were coming from his own shaking body.

 

"Are you okay?” A child asked.

 

He scrunched up his nose. It smelled pungent in here. He was kneeling in front of a toilet bowl, wearing tight school trousers and a white shirt with black marker strokes all over, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

The child squatting beside him put his small dry hand on his cheek. He looked concerned. He had light pink lips like azaleas, an uneven fringe, chubby cheeks so white that you could see the blue veins snake below. He was wearing his best friend’s beautiful, tired eyes.

 

"Graham.” Damon squeaked. His voice hadn’t finished breaking yet. What year was it? How old were they?

 

"Shall we go? We won’t have time to watch the full movie if we don’t hurry up."

 

He helped Damon to get up, sliding his hands under his armpits, his eyebrows rising in surprise when his friend showed no resistance, as limp as a ragdoll. Damon’s head was spinning, and his woolen socks were soaked in piss. The two friends left the cubicle in silence. Around them, the filthy tiled walls came in all sorts of white and yellow shades. Here and there, the schematic outline of a penis, or the caricature of a teacher accompanied by dirty rhymes. The cold light of a provincial winter was rushing through the broken, half-opened wooden door. He could see the familiar firs of Stanway lined up outside. Damon liked their dark green colour that reminded him of the Abbey Road record sleeve, but the gentle way they swayed, like indolent algae, annoyed him to no end, for some reason. He felt his hyperactive adolescent muscles twitch under his skin, like eels charged with lightning. He glanced at Graham, who was casting his eyes down. He looked embarrassed.

 

The wash basins were clogged by pinkish, stringy toilet paper balls, and the faucet was spitting icy water on three drifting leathery masses, which Damon quickly identified as his school bag and his brogues. He put his shoes on and wedged his bag between his elbow and his knee before trying to wring out its corners, but to no avail. His bag was totally ruined and the notebooks inside probably were too. His eyes began to sting, a distant sadness hovering over them like a fog. He let the bag fall on the floor and stared at his own reflection in the chipped mirror. Pimpled round cheeks, pouty lips, azure, shiny eyes, like two chlorinated pools. He was cute, he thought, but he looked perfectly insufferable, and this made him chuckle under his breath. He had a headache, a cottony mouth, and he felt more like a Mr Potato Head or one of the creepy puppets that peopled his studio, than a real human. An ugly blue-violet patch, circled by mustard yellow, spread on his right temple. It hurt when he applied a slight pressure on it with his finger. "BIG FAG ALL-BRAN," he could read written in big bold letters behind the damp strands of bleached hair falling on his forehead. He felt immediately more alert, more anchored in reality. He was a prey. Instinctively, he placed his fingers on his bead necklace. He then plunged his hand into his trousers’ pocket, and it met a folded parchment paper. The magic formulas.

 

The white sun was shining high in the sky, veiled by a bank of cirrus clouds. Dead leaves were rotting on wet concrete. All they could see as they walked across the nearly deserted schoolyard was a series of brick and wooden walls. The buildings looked newer than how they did the last time Damon had walked around here, but the rough brutality of their geometry was still there, and as always, litter left behind by students was floating around in the breeze, before getting lodged between the empty arms of a bare oak. They walked along a tall fence, and he ran his palm on it. His pace was not fast enough to Graham's taste, because he kept getting distracted by graffitis, trees, or, further away, a student’s face he thought he had recognised, so Graham took his hand decisively and pulled him to the back gate. They carefully avoided the sports fields, even if they were little used at this time of year because of the frost and the mud which made sneakers slip on the ground. You were never too careful when it came to avoiding bullies. Damon glanced at the sweet boy who was walking by his side. He noticed his mod parka, new wave groups logos pinned to his blazer, and the few blisters shining at the end of his beginner guitarist’s fingers, and felt a sunny ball of joy expand in his chest.

 

"Who was it this time? Skinheads? " Graham asked, his peaceful expression changing as he saw that Damon had been watching him intently.

 

"I don’t remember.” He answered with a shrug, looking away with a smile. Graham's little voice was so endearing.

 

"Aren’t you pissed off that they stole your mac?"

 

"I guess."

 

At the time, he must have been beside himself and ready to fight. A subterranean anger was making his knuckles itch and he saw the fascinating waltz of fists, chairs, Guinness glasses and bass guitars happily crashing down on one side of his smug face. All of this did not matter anymore, though. Tomorrow he would surely be somewhere else, leaving his problems to the short-tempered teenager he used to be. He felt calmer than the Buddha as they arrived in front of Graham's small house, among the row of modest and identical dwellings of the bleak street behind the school. Dense hedgerows, tawny mosses .The winter wind made the foliage of the trees swell like the umbrellas of big green jellyfish tickled by an ocean current and the air filled with a lazy soku violin melody that existed only in his head, taking him back to Malian huts and their groundnut smell, very far from this bland English estate. The old swing was creaking in the backyard, and Damon’s wet shoes kept squeaking with each step. He took them out in the lobby, along with his dirty socks.

 

As he came into the living room, Damon could only marvel at the atrocious eighties interior decor: dark blue floral curtains, overstuffed velvet sofa, terrible pastel rose wallpaper. Funnily enough, it was making him feel welcome and warm. He then spotted a calendar, right next to the beige telephone. A picture of misty hills, bristling with pine trees, with the caption :"Schwarzwald National Park", and underneath, in large khaki letters "November 1982”. He was fourteen. The first notes of The Who’s "The Real Me" reached his ears: Graham had started the Quadrophenia cassette tape and was bringing two plates full of microwaved lasagna from the kitchen, which he placed on the glass-top coffee table next to a basket of mouth-watering sugar-sprinkled biscuits.

 

"You should go and erase this stuff from your forehead" the teenager advised, miming cleaning his face with a glove, before going back to the kitchen to make some tea.

 

Damon complied, still absorbed in the observation of his surroundings. He passed the big sister’s room, all neat and dreary, true to her future in the holy orders, then Graham’s. It was tiny and dimly lit, and the walls were overgrown with the invasive weeds of rock’n’roll: Keith Moon's anesthetized monkey eyes were staring at the stylized features of the Kinks printed in the colours of the Union Jack on the opposite wall, The Jam were posing in front of Big Ben, the ashen and slightly distorted faces of the Beatles looked down at Damon with contempt while Hendrix smiled calmly, draped in psychedelic patterns. Rickenbackers cut from magazines, smeared with exalted fluorescent paint, were twirling between the attractive figures of Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks, and there were crazy drawings all over the place, mostly abstract nonsense and tropical animals from other galaxies. A small drum kit was sitting in the center of the room, the cheap plastic on top of the toms almost completely battered. On the chest of drawers, a dozen of 7 inches records sleeves were arranged in unstable equilibrium like a miniature Stonehenge around a small record player. Against the wrought-iron bed frame, a saxophone sparkled brilliantly, and you could guess the tempting silhouette of a guitar underneath the rolled up bed sheets.

 

"I bet I can play better than Graham...That’s the first time in my life I’ve ever been able to say that.” he thought with a smirk.

 

Damon was suddenly hit by a wall of loneliness. He felt stuck inside himself. Whenever he would materialise in an era or another, it was as if he were locked up in a fossil museum abandoned by visitors. Now that he had some magic formulas to harness his power, he did not see why he had to avoid talking about it or playing with it, to show off a bit, waiting for this evil mage story to blow over. To hell with the risk of time paradoxes and detours of destiny! He felt far stronger than all that. The only entity that he had learned to fear was himself, because he could be both the protagonist trudging on the winding, muddy paths of his existence and the unforgiving Fortune perched on her mountain, sending him obstacles whenever she wished. Indeed, his own chaotic personality could generate improbable consequences, which had given him some terrible challenges that he had managed to get out of, using two kinds of ploy: either go with the flow or bend time and space thanks to his own iron will, the devastating strength of a desperate man thirsty for success and fueled by sonic fantasies. Why would the chain reactions of a modified past scare him, then? He knew he would always be able to land on his feet in the end.

 

Fists clenched, he returned to the living room, stood in front of the screen, then announced, as solemnly as he could :

 

"Graham! I'm a witch's son, and I can travel in time! I'm actually 50 years old as we speak."

 

His host gave him an indulgent smile and replied:

 

"That's cool. I've got no super powers myself, so you've got to understand that I can’t watch the telly through you."

 

"Come on!” He insisted with a frown, "Time travel! Isn’t it the coolest thing you've ever witnessed?"

 

He refrained from stomping his foot on the floor at the risk of looking too childish, which would have been somewhat ironic for the fifty-year-old that he was. His friend drank some Nesquik from his Snoopy bowl then wiped the chocolate mustache it had made above his mouth with the back of his hand.

 

"I haven’t witnessed anything yet, apart from your power to ruin the film."

 

"Okay, you brat!” He exclaimed as he sat next to his best friend, raising his index finger in the air "I'm going to prove it to you."

 

The problem was that he had no idea how to do it. Showing him his guitar skills would probably impress him, but it was not a sufficient proof. He began racking his brain, digging in its folds where hundreds of embarrassing anecdotes about him and his close friends slept.

All the while, Graham was feigning to look enthralled by the movie to show him his total lack of interest in what he believed to be one of his many attention-seeking theater kid antics.

 

"You know, your lasagna is going to be cold." he commented.

 

"That's it! I know something you've never told anyone ... yet."

 

Graham sighed and hopped from the sofa to put the film on pause, resigned to listening to his insane best friend’s rant.

 

"What is it?"

 

"I know who your crush is. You told me when you were drunk at a party, a long time ago ... Well, in at least a decade, actually. Oh, this is so cool, I’ve never thought this piece of information would ever be useful, but here we are!"

 

The teenager immediately lost the little colour that still tinged his cheeks, but tried not to look affected by Damon’s claims.

 

"I don’t have a crush. I'm not a girl-obsessed caveman like you are.” he scoffed.

 

"But if Emily Meyer asked you out, you wouldn’t say no."

 

"What? That’s not true! I mean, I'm not particularly interested in her. She's too ... And I'm not…”

 

"Liar, liar, liar!” He shouted as he leaped up, falling down on all fours on the seat cushion like an over-excited dog, his feral smile unveiling a row of crooked teeth. “You told me you liked her because she reminded you of your beloved Audrey Hepburn. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve never been able to see the resemblance, but maybe that’s because I’m not a real visual LSD-brain artist like you are.”

 

"You read my diary." Graham blurted out, eyes going glassy with panic.

 

"No, Graham, I can time travel.” He reiterated, putting his hands on top of his friend's shoulders, and articulating each syllable as if he were speaking to a hearing-impaired person.

 

"You read my diary without asking me!” The boy accused again, freeing himself from his touch and almost making him fall from the sofa.

 

"Hey, man, calm down! I didn’t even know you had one. And when would I have had the time to find it in the bloody mess that is your room and get to the part where you talk about her? I’m not that keen on knowing all your schoolboy’s secrets!”

 

"Oh, so time travel is obviously the most plausible explanation then!"

 

"It is!"

 

An uncomfortable silence settled in the living room. Damon sat back and served himself some tea, staring at the fuming brown liquid pensively. While the curls of hot steam unraveled over his mug, he began to discern the broad outlines of a plan.

 

"Let's forget about Emily Meyer, shall we?” he suggested with a fake cheerful tone “Tell me about your day, Graham. Tell me about details I have no way of knowing.Tell me about what surprised you, what caught your attention."

 

Graham was pouting, arms crossed. He looked so much younger than thirteen years old, in Damon's opinion. Or maybe he had gotten so old, and his daughter had grown up so much that he could not really remember what a thirteen-year-old was supposed to look like.

"Why are you asking me that?” he muttered.

 

"I'm going to go back in time and tell you all about your day, like a prediction! That way you'll know I can time travel. Brilliant, isn’t it?"

 

His friend blew a raspberry, apparently not willing to cooperate. He tried to escape Damon's unwavering gaze, where he was concentrating all his mental forces in a silent prayer. As always, Graham ended up giving in.

 

"Alright, alright.” He looked up and fidgeted a little before starting with his tale under Damon’s encouraging eyes.

 

“Uhm...So, this morning, I woke up too late, so as I ran I tripped over and now I’ve got a bruise on my left knee. I drank, uhm, chocolate milk, apple juice and I ate a bit of cake. And then… Then when I was walking down the road I almost fell again because of my neighbour’s dog. You know, the black pit bull, it barked at me and it echoed in all my bones. But I think I’m more afraid of the neighbour herself, honestly, she’s this very tan, very thin, very old mayonnaise-haired praying mantis, and her perfume stinks like lavender air freshener. But I didn’t see her today, anyway. So, then, during maths class, I tried to concentrate but all I could think about was an episode of the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons and how I had forgotten the chords from The Jam’s Billy Hunt. I drew a few faces, a few monsters and a few mountains in the margins, the usual, you know. And after class, when I was looking for you, I saw Ashley and her friends peeking at the boys’ loo and laughing and so when they went away, I went in there and found you in the poor state you were in. And now you’re trying to convince me that you can time travel and I’m beginning to wonder if the skinheads haven’t hit you a little too hard on the bonce this time. That’s it, really. That’s my day.”

 

"Yeah, pretty boring."

 

"Fuck off.” He protested weakly, his voice faltering as he looked down.

 

"But that will do the trick! Now, I have to find a way to control my power a bit more, so that I don’t find myself in 1912."

 

Graham, vaguely intrigued, watched as Damon pushed bowls, cups, and plates aside before pulling out the page full of magic spells from his pocket and flattening it on the table, smoothing the folds with his palm. After re-reading in his head the few mysterious latin phrases that he did not dare to pronounce anymore at the risk of ending up at the other end of the historical timeline, he looked at the diagram that was taking almost a third of the sheet. A silver ring segmented into twelve squares, each filled with a zodiac sign, surrounded two stars, one drawn inside the other. A short Latin expression was written along each branch and each point of the stars displayed some Roman numerals. Damon noticed that three elements stood out clearly because they were written in a glittering carmine ink, as if fresh blood had been delicately spread on the grainy page: the symbol of the Scorpio sign, the number LXXXII on a point of the first star, and the number XXIII on a point of the second one.

 

L-XXX-II. 50-30-2. 82. 1982. Scorpio. October-November. November 1982. XXIII ... 23?

 

"What day is it today, Graham?"

 

His friend was startled by his suddenly more mature sounding voice, calm and cavernous. Despite the mid-puberty teenage tone, he had just talked in a way that was very different from how his younger self usually spoke.

 

"The 23rd, I think. What are you doing?"

 

"Man, these snobs of Albion keep writing in Latin to feel superior to the inexperienced, but it's far from being complicated, really! This ring represents the months, sort of, this star must be for the years and this one for the days. I suppose that I just have to read the corresponding formulas, written on the branches of the stars, and I’m sent to the chosen date. As easy as setting up a DeLorean! Oh yes, my bad, you don’t know the reference, not out yet. But wait a minute! Can I decide the hour?”

 

He turned his attention to another scribbled scheme, representing two containers, one above the other, a stream of water coming from a hole in the first to fall into the second: he recognised a clepsydra, that is, an ancient water clock. This was accompanied by a list of ingredients in latin, illustrated by small pencil drawings. _Catena aurea_ : visibly, a kind of metal bracelet, _capilli imperatoris_ : a pile of hair, _arena ater_ : dust, or dark sand, it was not too clear, _ovum aquilae_ : a wide egg, _lac asininum_ : a bowl of white liquid, _coriandrum_ : small leaves, probably coriander judging by the name. An arrow linked the list to the scheme of the clepsydra.

 

Bubbling with excitement, Damon rushed to the kitchen under Graham's astonished stare and started looking for adhesive tape, before retrieving empty bottles from the bin to create a makeshift clepsydra. Graham took the paper sheet in his hands, examined the diagrams, looked at his friend attacking the bottles with kitchen scissors, the sound of crushed plastic blowing off his ears, then looked down at the sheet again, not understanding much of the situation.Totally unfazed, Damon swiftly drew a vertical scale on the bottom container he had just made, with twenty-four segments for the twenty-four hours of the day. After that, he cut a lock of his hair, got some dust from a shelf, took an egg and milk from the fridge and found a jar of aromatic herbs. As Graham was about to ask Damon if he was ever planning on explaining what this was all about, the sorcerer’s apprentice told him to go get a jewel of any kind in such an authoritative tone that his friend obeyed without asking for further details.

A huge mad scientist smile plastered on his youthful face, Damon mixed everything in a salad bowl with tap water, and poured the greenish broth into the top container, the chain bracelet Graham had given him clanking when it hit the bottom of it. He did not make the effort to react to Graham’s complaints about the amount of disgusting liquid that had been spilled on the floor, so the confused and irritated teenager decided that he had had enough of this craziness and went to get his guitar to pass the time in the living room until they had to leave to go back to class.

 

The potion was flowing, outside storm clouds were gathering, and annoyance was whirling in Graham's dark eyes. Soon the water level reached the 12 o'clock mark in the bottom container. With an air of pure concentration, Damon took the paper sheet that had been left on the kitchen table, put a finger on the Scorpio sign and recited the formulas of the number 23 and the year 1982: " _vita ante acta_ " and " _dulce periculum_ ". It was with a triumphant smile that he saw sparks ignite his vision and felt himself lose consciousness.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @robin1315 for proofreading this chapter!


	6. Ogni Pena Più Spietata

Damon was dreaming. He was standing on the deck of a caravel that was splitting the ocean like wild geese soar through the sky. Straight as a ramrod, a top hat screwed on his head, he was scanning the horizon with a copper telescope. His lips tasted the wind laden with spray, and his breathing was following the gentle rhythm of the waves that lapped against the hull. The whimsical, humid piano chords of Debussy’s The Sunken Cathedral were dropping off from the fat orgeat clouds like pearly hail, diving heavily into the sea as wild porcelain splashed around, kissed by silky sun beams.

  
  
"Captain! Captain!"

  
  
Graham had popped up behind him, hair looking like a sea urchin and eyes wide behind his foggy glasses. Damon sighed wearily, lowering the telescope. The piano had backed away into its clouds like a frightened snail, the pleasant strings of notes fading away.

  
  
"What's wrong, Coxon? Why such a din?” he asked, rather annoyed about having to leave his meditative state.

  
  
"A monster! A monster from the depths of the sea!” The sailor bellowed, pointing to the top castle with a trembling finger.

  
  
Damon looked up. Indeed, a monster from the depths of the sea was hanging from the mainmast, munching the sail very calmly, as a turtle would savour tasty salad leaves.The first thing he noticed was that the creature looked absolutely nauseating. He would have described it as a large malformed sea lion of a distasteful scabby brown colour, encrusted with dozens of silvery festering buboes. The monster even had some under its armpits. Damon made a disgusted face. “This thing needs to find a good moisturiser.” he thought as he inspected its dry and saggy skin. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he tried to remember if the Buccaneer's Code said anything about the conduct to be adopted when such an encounter occurred. All he remembered of the content of this damn manual was the first rule: on any occasion, never forget to act with the most British phlegm. Adjusting his top hat, he cleared his throat and exclaimed, lifting his pointer finger up to add some emphasis:

  
"Sailor Coxon! We must keep calm at all times. Haven’t you read the Buccaneer's Code? Now, go get the rocket launcher, it must be in the... Sailor Coxon?"

  
  
He realised that Graham had disappeared and had been replaced by a puddle of purulent drool. The monster had caught the sailor by wrapping its tail around his waist and was now beating its future snack against the mast, probably to knock him out before it could consume him. All previous intent to keep calm was abandoned by the captain when the ignominious beast’s mouth opened on two rows of black fangs as sharp as swords, foaming with what looked like lumpy sewage water. Graham did not seem reassured by this vision either, and began to sob.

  
  
"Sea monster! Put this innocent sailor back on the ground! Come and have a go at someone your own size!” Damon yelled, waving his fist.

  
  
The monster did not seem particularly impressed by the captain's injunctions and began tearing off his wiggling victim's striped sweater with the methodical slowness of the languid predator lolling at the top of the food chain.

  
"You vile pudding-looking animal, why don’t you go eat jellyfish like your fellow sea creatures? They are useless, they have no brain!” he insisted, beads of sweat appearing on his hairline.

  
  
The monster turned away from Graham for a moment. Its shapeless face almost looked thoughtful. Its hideous mouth opened again, as if it were going to answer the captain. It was then that in a learned voice it told him:

  
"I may remind you that Pergolesi, despite his early death at the age of 26, has had a huge influence on Italian Baroque music."

  
  
Damon raised an eyebrow. This monster was decidedly more interesting than he had thought at first. Although it did not seem to have the capacity to hold a logical conversation, it seemed to know a lot about eighteenth century composers.

  
  
"Damon Albarn!” roared the creature, shaking poor Graham in the air. "Will you come back to us!"  
  
  
Damon awoke with a start, strident seagull cries ringing in his ears. As he lifted his head from his crossed arms, the cries morphed into a choir of giggles, and the first thing he saw was a wobbly wooden desk where dozens of insults had been engraved, the most visible one being ‘PANSY QUEER’. The smell of teenage sweat mingling with the odour of chalk was enough to tell him where he was. He looked around and took in the sight of one of the poorly insulated classrooms of Stanway Comprehensive: the harsh lighting, the mocking sneers, the mind-numbing catchphrases of the few anti-bullying, pro-work-your-ass-off posters on the beige walls. The clock said it was 11:20. It was pretty close to what he was aiming for with the help of his magic clepsydra, which made the corners of his eyes crinkle with self-satisfaction. Looking down at his feet, he saw that his brogues shined like they were brand new and that his school bag was still intact.  
  
A few feet away from his desk, the sea monster of his dream had been replaced with his former music teacher, Mr. Hildreth, a look full of contained rage behind his little glasses. Damon had seen this expression way too many times, whenever he would forget to play his part in the orchestra or miss a cue during a play.

  
  
"Well, since my course is not interesting enough to keep you awake, why don’t you come up to the front of the classroom and sing the aria? It will be much more lively than if I played the cassette, don’t you think? "

 

  
"Yeah! Let’s hear the faggot sing!” shouted a grating voice at the back of the room.

 

  
"Bromley, if you open your big mouth again, I’m sending you to the principal's office.” Mr.Hildreth replied without even looking at the disruptive student. The giggles started again, a little bit more hesitant this time.

 

  
The teacher smoothed the wrinkles on his light blue shirt before moving to the upright piano next to his desk. With a wave of his hand, he invited Damon to join him. A nagging pit growing in his stomach, Damon began to look through his bag in order to save some time.

 

  
  
"I know you forgot to bring your score, Albarn. Don’t worry, I have one here.” Mr Hildreth sighed, patting the music rack.

  
  
Damon gulped uneasily. Back then, he already had a hard time remembering how to sing those classical pieces after a week, so there was no way that after thirty years the smallest chunk of melody would come back to his brain. He was going to have to try to decipher the score on the spot, and make a fool of himself when he would have to start singing. But knowing the path he had chosen later, he was not that bothered about throwing his academic career away; and after all the embarrassing moments that he had lived before, it was not a few bum notes that were going to kill him. So he stood up, his chin held high, in a sort of impersonation of the haughty child he had been, crossed the room without paying attention to the dirty looks that some of the students cast him and stood beside his teacher, radiating a confidence that in no way could belong to anyone this age, even to himself back then, and that he hoped would blind them all.

 

  
His former classmates’ oily faces, as bland and interchangeable as their school clothes, immediately reminded him of why Colchester had been the graveyard of the blissful faith in humanity that had animated him up to the point he had moved to Essex. At the back of the class sat the dimwitted brutes who only swore by sport and war machines and spat on all the sidewalks. Among them, Ronald Bromley, a blotchy skinned, mousy haired boy with eyes set so wide apart he looked like ET’s cousin, was snickering to himself, sticking two fingers up at him. Damon just gave him a tight smile.

 

  
It was quite amusing to look at these kids with the perspective of an adult. They were just skinny, empty skulled teens infected by rural boredom and feverish with unexplainable anger. He already knew that back then, only with less certainty and more bitterness. He remembered that he used to be scared senseless of some of the most violent and deceitful lads, even though he would have never admitted it out loud. Almost everything was about pride in this school, about not showing you were hurt, and ensuring that it looked like everything was going according to your plan. Disrespect everyone and make sure you are respected by all: that sounded like a good motto for those petty Colchester kids (or the dark side of the show-business industry, as he would discover later on). The school yard was a wild west where your parents’ wealth, the way you dressed and talked, your favourite bands, football teams, and your idea of masculinity defined in which tribe you belonged, who you had to avoid at the risk of taking a beating and who you had to torment. This could be exciting at times, when there were big fights, but depressing otherwise.

At the time, even if he knew, deep down, that it was the stupidest thing he could ever do, he had absorbed all of this poisonous system; but as an unpopular and rather clever kid, he had had at the very least the opportunity to have more hindsight on it. There was one crucial rule he knew he never could have followed anyway, even if he had tried: if you are willing to stand out, never wander too far from the norm. Well, the norm of this rural, sleepy, ethnically homogeneous bubble of a town. Maybe he could have been more of a wishy-washy twat if all the kids at Colchester had been the loud and outlandish arty types he had met later on in London. What seemed true in all settings, at least, was that you only became a master at the art of being unoriginal when you succeeded in making your submission to stereotypes look like something unique that others should emulate. “I promise to be different!” Yeah, right.  
  
All these kids, he pitied them, for how they had been conditioned, and how badly they had probably ended, for lack of passion, lack of thought, lack of hope. Well, some of them might have become family men and respectable office workers. Even this idea was making him want to throw up. The comforting stronghold of the norm smothering everyone to sleep. Maybe he was being too condescending. He just felt the need to mourn the vital energy that he knew at least a few of these kids had had in them, cloistered inside or misdirected into violence, before realising it had left them, extinguished by the years.

 

  
To compensate for this doom and gloom, he had to admit that apart from this bunch, most of the students in his class were not that bad. He remembered he had been friendly to some of the girls, to the drama kids and the 2-Tone fans. He had not been close to any of them though, and had forgotten more than half of their names. The way he used to speak his mind without any filter, mostly to brag, to talk about his niche interests or to complain about everything and everyone had not helped his case when it had come to making friends.

 

 

Hearing Mr. Hildreth clear his throat next to him, Damon turned his attention back to the score of the aria he was supposed to sing. The title read ‘Ogni Pena  Più Spietata' ... and that was pretty much all he knew about it when his teacher started to play the introduction on the piano. He was going to screw this up royally, he thought before taking the leap. During the first few staffs, he tried as hard as he could, listening as Mr. Hildreth hummed the melody, changing notes as soon as he heard his teacher’s tongue clicking against his palate disapprovingly. He was lucky because the singing was quite similar to the piano part. Apart from the fact that he was a little out of breath and that he had mispronounced half of the Italian lyrics, he thought he was doing rather well, pride swelling in his chest... until he had to reach the treble and that of course, his teenager voice cracked horribly and went off in a dreadful nasal falsetto. This caused the hilarity of the class once again and seemed to amuse Mr Hildreth, judging by the shadow of a smile dancing at the corner of his lips. This was the sign for Damon that he could let go and be a clown.

 

Discreetly at first, so that the teacher did not notice it right away, he began to speed up the tempo and exaggerate the expression, no longer pretending to be sheepish at each too high or too low halftone, or each awfully butchered lyric. Mr. Hildreth did not say a word but his smile had faded and a frown settled on his face instead. Damon began to swing his left leg to the rhythm of the song as a kind of pendulum in front of his other leg, in a way that could have been interpreted as a nervous gesture at first; but he was making wider and wider swings as the song went on, looking like a giant metronome, and finally modified the move a little by adding a bend of the knee so that it looked like he was dancing the French cancan. Exhilarated by his own performance, and taking pleasure from the puzzled faces of his audience, he pretended to lift his shirt once, twice, hearing gasps in response.

 

And then came the grand finale: without warning, he sang at the higher octave, as loud as he could, slaughtering all the high notes at the end of the aria. At this point, Mr Hildreth had stopped playing. All eyes were on Damon as he let the showman inside him take over, slamming the soles of his brogues against the floor and rotating his hips. Going nuts in public had always given him an intense sensation of freedom. No cloud of shame was darkening the horizon of his wonderful stupidity. He almost did not feel the balls of paper and chewing gum he had been receiving from the last row. His show was interrupted when he felt his teacher's hand rest on his shoulder and heard his stern voice, where hints of total incredulity were seeping in, scolding him:

  
"Enough of that! Go back to your seat. And you will come to talk to me at the end of the course."

  
  
Damon obeyed, his half lidded eyes making him look like a satiated cat. Teenagers around him whispered; he was still high on the performance he had made them endure. As the lesson resumed, he noticed with delight that music related facts he did not know he still had stored in some lost brain cell isles were resurfacing from his memory. Mr Hildreth’s kind face was lighting up as he browsed through the long dynasty of the sound obsessed, his hands blooming as he explained, giving life to long dead composers by this simple gesture. It was clear that the man truly loved his job, otherwise he probably would not have agreed to put himself through the straining task of trying to catch the attention of a class of sluggish, undeserving students. It was something Damon had always admired about him. Unfortunately, he could not manage to concentrate fully on what he was saying, as he felt the glances of some of his classmates behind him make his skin tingle. Despite his initial refusal to be affected by embarrassment, an uncomfortable warmth rose to his cheeks. He guessed he would always be stuck between blind self-confidence and self-consciousness, making him an awkward, self-absorbed, moody idiot that no one really knew how to handle. Forever in the "circus freak" category, never taken seriously, for better or for worse.

 

To distract himself from his self-pitying inner monologue, he began to gaze at the logos of Madness and the Specials that were stuck all over his binders. He could not believe he was back at a time when it had only been about a year since Ghost Town had been released. So much music had happened since then, nourishing his imagination… He examined himself in the blade of his scissors, trying to determine which hardly visible line on his smooth, juvenile face had later turned into a wrinkle. He then took a look at the puffy, crinkly hairdo a few girls were sporting, batting his eyelashes at those who caught him staring. He could not tell if his old self, seeing him sabotage his image for fun, would have approved of his antics or wanted to strangle him.

 

  
The whole class seemed to quiver like shrivelled dry leaves flapping in the wind as the bell was about to ring. When it finally did, Mr Hildreth flinched at the deafening symphony of voices and screeching chairs. He looked absolutely exhausted as he watched the flow of students haemorrhaging from the room. Damon hastily stuck his stuff into his bag, sprang from his seat and went up to him, trying to inject as much meaning as he could into the stare he gave him. He might have had overdone it because his teacher seemed completely disorientated, silence stretching where the lecture about the student’s baffling behaviour should have unfolded.

  
  
“Nigel, I’d like to thank you for everything. Keep pushing your students, keep pushing me to my limits. You’re great at what you do.” Damon said as he patted him on the back.

 

  
  
Before his teacher could even react, he stormed out the classroom, smiling like a fool. Now that his mission of making himself sound like a crazy person while still speaking his heart was complete, he had to go look for Graham.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you very much @robin1315 for helping me with this (weird) chapter!


	7. Blood

Damon got lost in the long blue corridors at least twice before reaching the emergency door at the back of the school. This was the spot where he and Graham used to meet up at lunchtime before going to the latter’s house or hanging out at the Portakabin.

 

He pushed the plastic handle and the wind made his mac slap against his hip like a tarpaulin. Strands of dry hair were scratching the corner of his eye. In front of him, the grey and brown horizon: an empty parking lot, the sports fields encircled by thickets. He hummed happily as his eyes followed the winding flight of a lark. Between the protruding ribs and crooked arms of the contortionist trees that grew awkwardly between slabs of concrete, balls of twigs were pustules and tumours.

 

Each tree in this parking lot had a name that only Damon knew. The skunk tail, the pine flame, the fossilized thunderstorm. He and Graham used to chat under the threadbare spruce he had christened “The Termite Mound”. He remembered he had been inspired by an article on parasites, the pictures of which made termites look like degenerate gummy bears, in one of his parents’ encyclopedia volumes he had read one sleepless night, after getting tired of gazing at the same old plumages of species of birds he already knew by heart.

 

Further away, on the other side of the sports fields, the hare-coloured woods were swollen with haze. It made him want to go and say hi to his tree, to kiss the ground under which the secrets he had hidden were safely kept between motherly roots. He would engrave a seven pointed star on its trunk. He would take Graham with him, too. In his mind fizzled the sweet boy’s smile, lighting up like an elevator button as it reaches the corresponding floor, ding!

 

 

A metallic lustre was spilled onto the subdued landscape, and from between Graham’s teeth a light blue liquid began to seep, flooding Damon’s brain. A few feet away from him, three boys were watching him with clenched fists, standing perfectly still. He took in the sight of their spiky hair, pointy chins and elbows, and their scarecrow sweaters full of holes. They had ridiculous movie gangsters’ expressions frozen on their faces, intense stares and the corners of their lips hanging down. Beneath their pale, gelatin-like complexion, blood was making each of their icy cheeks swell into small pouches marbled with veins. The one that looked the more familiar, although Damon could not for the life of him remember his name, was playing with a Swiss army knife, catching the sun and throwing blinding arrows at his future victim’s eyes.

 

Damon’s joints slid slowly in his knees and elbows. A rusty automaton, that was all he was, even in this young, more flexible body. All the bag punching sessions in the world would not change this fact: it had been way too long since he had last been involved in a real fight, and one as unfair as this one promised to be. The kids in front of him were at least two feet taller than him, and the many cuts they proudly sported on their noses and knuckles seemed to indicate that they considered brawling as one of their favourite hobbies.

 

He thought of the toilet bowl and felt a ripple of fear travel through his chest. If he turned around to come back inside the building, his opponents would have time to throw themselves onto him while he would be busy trying to open the heavy door. Outrunning them appeared to be the only solution. He set his feet apart, one in front of the other, his left eyelid twitching with anticipation. The three boys did not flinch, but hatred was hardening in the quivering waters of their eyes. The only thing that really moved was the blade, pivoting steadily, tirelessly, making the powdery air shine. They were glossy, pathetic resin pirate statues that you would give an unimpressed once-over in a ghost train that did not move fast enough for you not to notice how unrealistic they looked. Yet Damon knew that at the first stride he would take, their sinister mugs would spring out from the scene like Jack out of his box. He would run. There was no way he would let this bunch of plastic kids pride themselves on managing to intimidate him.

 

“What the fuck you’re looking at, wankers!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, to put up a front, and regretted it as soon as the echo of his own sharpish voice came back to him.

 

The knife froze, and their pupils widened, drawing him in like black holes.

 

Even before they leaped towards him, he could already feel a shoulder colliding with his flank at full speed and his temple spreading blood like jam on the asphalt. The black marker, squealing furiously as it would sink into the folds of his cheek, like a wild bat, like a knife butchering a rare steak. And the blade, a looming threat, a whistling comet barely missing his forehead, the twinkling twin of a large, cruel grin.

 

The toilet door was opened with the kick of a black boot, and a big, hairless hand stuck his head into the bowl, crushing his nose against the ceramic.

 

"Let's see if the faggy witch can float..."

 

He sighed with relief when his consciousness slipped away.

 

 

Reality faded out and got embroidered with wavering images and fragmented sounds. A heady nocturnal melody came out of shifting sands, crescendo. The strident, stumbling, never ending minor third of an ambulance, going round and round in his head. He was laying down, paralysed, hovering in space. Knots in his stomach. Incredibly scared. He saw a white highway, with orange lines running like day-glo greyhounds. They were blurry, until they were not, turning out to be long halogen worms crawling on a ceiling. The rustles that cluttered his head morphed into a loud but distant cacophony that permeated his ears and sinuses, the delayed sound of a thousand waves crashing down a pier, a thousand orchestras crashing down at the foot of a cliff. A breathy, echoey woman’s voice rose and made a clinical observation: "He’s losing a lot of blood.” If his neck had not been as stiff as it was, he would have nodded at that. He could feel it, that his skull was a punctured, oozing watermelon. The top of his head just felt cold, wet and open. He squinted at the foggy plastic beak that had grown on his face. Numbness subsided.

 

Pain exploded in his whole body and the blast wave propelled him out of his limbs. After rolling over in the air, streaks of light all around him, he tried to stabilise himself, arms flailed out to his sides.

 

He was low density and free of pain. His hands felt as flat, wide and light as fig leaves. When he looked down at them, he only saw two transparent, sizzling clouds of gnats. He buried his fist into his chest, and his eyes widened as the two translucent materials mingled. He was, it seemed, practically invisible and immaterial.

 

Below him, the rolling bed that carried his real body, a pasty moult whose head had turned into a big blood red geode, glistening and hollow, was quickly moving away. Calm returned in the hospital corridor for a little while. Damon decided that he had nothing to do in this impersonal place where he felt like suffering always overrode joy and flew through the ceiling.

 

When he found himself in the middle of a sea of clouds, the hospital and the few houses and barns around it reduced to Lego bricks sparsely arranged on the patchwork of grassy valleys and yellow fields, he realised how fast he had ascended. He glided across the sky for what felt like hours, thinking of nothing but the wind that ran through him, the ice crystals sparkling like salt in the cirrus filaments, and the dark green velvet hems of the Scottish woods he was flying over. At the first small town he made out, he slowed down, flew over the residential neighbourhood that made up its periphery, then dived to the centre which was huddled around a fishing harbour. The facades, dripping with gold sent by the setting sun, spread open like the covers of a book to welcome him, a humble bookmark.

 

As he tried to return to a standing position, floating about ten inches above the main road, a tourist bus rushed towards him and went through his volatile body. This technically only had the effect of a gentle stream of air on the spectre he had become, but it made him collapse in a crazy fit of laughter, both nervous and jubilant. He could not believe what was happening to him. He was a ghost, a poltergeist! Able to do any type of aerobatics while observing without being seen. Invincibly invisible. Thrilled by his new supernatural status, he took off and flied towards the pewter sea. Swirling over the waves, he sung an Icelandic nursery rhyme to himself, revelling in the tricky syllables that were still foreign to his tongue. He was mist. He could see his translucent toes grazing the water but could not feel its texture at all. During his high-flying exercise, his eyes caught the details of the shoreline. They quickly accumulated like grains of sand until he came to the conclusion that the row of pastel houses that lined the pebble beach was none other than the one he had seen on postcards of the picturesque town of Portree. It was there that he and all those who participated in the ongoing Gorillaz tour had gotten rooms in an ancient ash grey brick hotel before heading to the Ghoulish Highlands Halloween Festival, in the next glen.

 

The event was a windfall for local shopkeepers, and the windows of the numerous souvenir shops were haunted by scary monster masks that, nestled between cashmere scarves, let their empty sockets gaze out over the blissful strollers who flooded in the unusually noisy streets, eagerly filling their lungs with fresh sea air. Among them wandered a bunch of visibly distraught festival-goers, their faces still garishly painted. Damon spied on them while floating along the wharf. As he went past a fish and chips, he was jostled by a young woman with heavily made-up eyes, followed by a crumpled polyester vampire cloak, who had suddenly come out of the establishment to go and sit on the stone seawall. Her hunched body began to shake with sobs against the iron fence. In a matter of seconds, a similarly costumed man shot out of the restaurant, spitting the sharp-toothed rubber denture lodged inside his mouth to put it in his trouser pocket, and sat by her side, whispering reassuring words in her ear. He seemed unsure if he could caress her hair or not, so his hand just stilled above the back of her head. Her eyes brimming with tears were staring at the cell phone on her lap. Damon slowly approached them and leaned over the woman's shoulder to take a look at the lit screen that seemed to be the cause of her sorrow. On an online news page, he read: "Damon Albarn declared dead - Blur & Gorillaz frontman dies from his wounds after attack by masked individual at Ghoulish Highlands Festival.” As soon as he registered what this meant, he felt himself dissipate like a clearing fog.

 

The dream was forgotten.

 

 

 

 

 

Piss and coldness again. His stinging eyes met those, expressionless, but soft as almonds, of his lifelong friend. He planted a quick kiss on his cheek and stood up. How stupid had he been to forget about his bullies, too engrossed in his mission to find Graham. His friend followed him as he dragged himself to the mirror and clung to the edge of the sink. Oh, interesting. The insult was different from the last time around. Now he was a “DEMON”. The marker had apparently slipped, seeing that the N ended in a mushy, squiggly line going down his cheek. He wondered what exactly in his eyes, his cries and his punches, had inspired his baptiser to change his mind. As he began to wipe his forehead, Graham put his hands on his hips:

 

"We're not going to be able to watch the full movie if we don’t hurry."

 

Damon turned around and gave him a quizzical smile.

 

"We have all the time in the world, my dear Graham.” he crooned.

 

Graham shivered at the tone of his voice.

 

"You sound like a murderer or a femme fatale. I can’t decide."

 

A slow smirk dug a dimple in Damon’s cheek.

 

"I quite like that."

 

"Oh, no, I know who you sound like! The crazy droog from A Clockwork Orange. And you've got the same deranged face! The only thing missing is the eyelashes. They could have done that with their sharpie, would have been a bit more original."

 

"Hey, I'm no sociopath. Actually, I'm a nonviolent wizard."

 

He took a few steps towards Graham, who narrowed his eyes sceptically and recoiled.

 

“Stay here.” the older boy murmured, and gently pressed each of his hands on his friend’s temples.

 

Feigning an air of great concentration, he listed everything Graham had done that morning, from waking up late to drawing doodles in the margins, although his memory failed him when he attempted to remember the exact content of his breakfast.

 

“Who told you that?” Graham interrupted, knitting his brows.

 

“Who could have except for you?” he shot back.

 

Graham sighed.

 

“Damon...Did you really give my mum a ring to pull this moronic trick?” he chided, sounding like a tired teacher.

 

“If you want to know the truth, there’s one thing I’m going to ask you to do: shutting up, that is.”

 

 

A few cups of tea later, the chrononaut was done with his tale and was busy making another clepsydra, with steadier hands this time, while Graham was still stunned, staring at the parchment sheet that was supposed to back up this cock-and-bull story. He found that he was inclined to believe it, but he was beginning to feel very creeped out by the fact that he had been casually chatting with a fifty years old almost stranger who had taken possession of his best friend’s body. Knowing that this Damon had had sex, had had kids, and was probably married freaked him out. Thinking about hanging out with him made him feel sick. He was an adult, how could they ever get along? This was just too awkward. He who was already getting dizzy thinking of all the disturbing and unexplored depths of the Damon he knew when he happened to catch a glimpse of emotion he had not expected crinkling the boy’s confident idiot mask, how could he stand the dark unknown that hid behind this cardboard cut-out looking like his only true friend? But he did look amicable, Graham thought as he watched him waltz across the kitchen while a horribly funky disco tune was playing on the radio.

 

"Damon?"

 

"What is it?"

 

The question he wanted to ask had been burning his tongue since Damon had convinced him that he was from the future. He had to know, even if the answer was likely to make irreparable cracks in his heart.

 

"Am I, you know... Married, in the future?" he finally asked as he chewed on his thumb, feeling his heart beating hard, very hard in his ribcage.

 

"Yeah. You've got cute kids, too." Damon smiled warmly, putting the scissors back in the drawer and pausing to admire his work.

 

"Oh."

 

His cheeks went pink. The answer was so simple, beautiful as a diamond. A diamond on a wedding ring. Graham began to imagine an ivory silk train, a lace dress adorned with roses, polenta yellow flowers between tanned arms. He could not see the mysterious face of the beauty hidden under her veil. How would he look in a groom's suit?

 

"Am I going to be happy?"

 

Damon looked up at the ceiling, his mouth half open, an expression he often had when he was looking for the right words. Maybe he had not changed all that much over the years.

 

"Well, yeah, one day. Not right now, though. You'll be alright." he calmly answered, his back to him as he rummaged through the fridge.

 

When he saw Graham's disappointed pout, Damon wondered if he had been too honest with his terribly naive young sidekick. He walked up to him to put his arm around his shoulder and added:

 

"But we're going to go down in history, mate. The skimpy, and dusty with coke history of British pop culture, sure, but still, we'll be there!"

 

"What do you mean? What are we going to be famous for?" Graham queried, finding it harder and harder to hide his excitement.

 

A paternal smile grew on Damon’s face. He knew the next thing he was going to say would blow Graham's mind.

 

“I don’t know if I should tell you all that but...” he started, looking around as if he were afraid that someone would overhear the confidential piece of information he was about to disclose.

"Let's just say we're going to be on Top Of The Pops...more than once."

 

"Oh my god, that's...Are you serious? Are we going to be rock stars?" Graham raved, gripping his friend’s forearm tightly.

 

"More like pop people, yeah. The world is going to go bonkers for a while, I want you to know that." he said with a bittersweet smile, gazing into space. "When it happens, I want you to enjoy it as much as you can bring yourself to, and most of all, tell anyone who pisses you off to be so kind as to go fuck themselves."

 

"Crikey, Top Of The Pops! I can’t believe it. Of course I'm going to enjoy it! You'll be writing the songs, right? What will I be playing? Sax?"

 

"No, kazoo. And I'll play the harpsichord. We'll be called the Mighty Spoiled Eggs Collective."

 

Graham glared at him. "Experimental music it is, then."

 

"It was a joke, for the record."

 

"Christ, I know! Just because I’m thirteen doesn’t mean I’m stupid, you old codger”, the teenager retorted, shoving him playfully.

 

"Ugh, kids have no respect for their elders these days.”

 

Later that day, after many questions about what the future held were either answered or dismissed with a wave of the hand (“You’ll find out soon enough, son”), they decided to skip all their classes and go explore the woods together. “No consequences!” Damon had said. “We’re going to have a day of pure, unadulterated fun and if we fuck up too much, I’ll rewind.” This sounded like perfectly sound logic to Graham, the only drawback being that he would not remember anything of their day if Damon did go back in time again. Before setting off, Damon suggested that they dressed up to scare the respectable Colchester citizens they would meet on the way there. Graham chose to wear one of his father’s moth-eaten military uniforms while the other boy put on a chequered skirt he found in the sister's room and smeared his face with glittery eyeshadow. As they walked out of the house, Damon took Graham by the hand and started to run as fast as his skinny legs allowed him to, screaming like a fury. A moustached neighbour popped out of his laurel hedge with a stern look under the hairy caterpillar that was his eyebrow. Graham's street became long trails of mixed colours as they reached the speed of light. The freedom that made the boys’ hearts beat at the same frenzied speed felt new to both of them, Graham discovering the happiness of disobedience and Damon reliving a childish mischief that, even if he tried hard to kindle it in his heart, seemed to be inevitably waning as the years went by.

 

They were out of breath when they arrived at the edge of the foggy woods. Under Graham's slightly mocking stare, Damon stopped to massage his exposed thighs made red by the cold, swearing under his breath all the while. Then, they entered this sanctuary felted with moss, carpeted with brambles and inhabited by a silent, bulbous population of white mushrooms, slotted discs of semolina. A frosty light that would make your eyes hurt if you looked at it for too long rested on the fur of ten-storey firs. Soft clay slobbered under their footsteps, the pace of which decreased as they felt the crushing power that was pulsing through the eerie glow of the canopy, filled with chirpy conversations of hidden sparrows. A gentle breeze carried the penetrating smell of rotting bark to their nostrils. There was a presence, an aftertaste, an otherworldly life erased from the palimpsest of the ancestral forest, which still shuddered between the lonely wooden towers, the lichen-plated menorahs, the arches that supported no vaults, the dead branches creaking like the masts of grounded vessels. Damon almost cried with joy when he saw the little shrine at the foot of the giant he called his tree. As meticulous as a bowerbird decorating its nest with flashy scrap metal, his fourteen-year-old self had gathered a motley assortment of rocks, wilted flowers, jade figurines and other trinkets in a crate placed vertically against the trunk. Holding his breath, he touched some of the items with his fingertips and prayed silently, before drawing a heptagram in the dirt. Inside the shrine, a piece of broken mirror covered in dew reflected his peaceful eyes.

 

"You know what we should do?" he told Graham, who was trying to climb on a maple without much success, his father’s large coat impeding his movements.

 

"What?"

 

His voice was bright and soothing, like a clarinet. A little veiled already, even if his throat was still a virgin land, unsoiled by cigarette smoke. Damon’s was far more nasal, a bassoon when he was old, more of an oboe when his voice had not broken, with its wavering, amber strangeness, wry despite itself. He had gotten used to the higher pitch. His ears had just had to recalibrate to this forgotten frequency.

 

"What?" Graham repeated, eyeing him curiously, as he had fallen silent, getting lost in his own thoughts.

 

"A blood oath.” he answered after blinking confusedly, trying to remember what he had wanted to say. “To swear that our destinies will be tied forever."

 

"What good would it do, if you already know we'll be pals in the future?" Graham replied after he had dropped from the branch he had been hanging from.

 

"To make it official, maybe."

 

He made the edge of the broken mirror slide against his skin, testing out the sharpness.

 

"And if you rewind? Your official blood oath will be flushed down the toilets of time.”

 

"I just want to do it, Graham, stop bothering me with your critical thinking." he chuckled.

 

Without further ado, Damon cut his palm with the mirror and the slash filled with the darkest red. The wind rose. It only took a shared solemn look and the same diagonal was neatly cut into the other boy’s hand. He hissed. It stung a lot. They clasped their hands together, cold fingers meeting cold fingers, searing blood blending at the centre. It was nothing special, but now it was done. Linked till the end of times.

 

 

When they were finished bandaging their cuts and swapping their weird attires for their normal clothes at Graham’s place, they went back to school to see if they could pick on people they disliked, or maybe turn something into art if the opportunity arose. The yard was devoid of people, so they ended up pilfering acrylic paint bottles from the art room to go drip-painting on the ugliest walls they could find, telling themselves that they were doing everyone a great service by making the tame bricks or the unpleasant beige roughcast disappear under swirly layers of iguana green and citrus yellow. Graham wondered why he had waited so long before engaging in such acts of creative vandalism outside of his little room since nobody seemed to notice what was going on at all.

 

After a lengthy diatribe on smartphones (Graham still did not have a clear understanding of what they were, and why the time-traveller seemed so agitated when mentioning these puzzling devices), Damon painted orange dots all over his fellow artist’s face and arms, not missing the chance to tickle him with the paintbrush, and said it would be funny to convince the sour-tempered school nurse that he had caught a rare exotic disease. As planned, she was very alarmed when a piebald madman came into the iodine-smelling sick room slobbering and babbling deliriously. His accomplice took advantage of the diversion to steal some stuff from a closet. Hiding syringes and sticking plaster under his shirt, he nudged Graham in the ribs, inducing his immediate recovery.“I feel so much better all of a sudden!” the miraculously cured teenager exclaimed, wiping strings of saliva from his chin, and they left the dumbfounded nurse behind them, their bellies hurting from trying to suppress their laughter. With the plaster, Graham taped his eyes and his mouth open, while the syringes were used to spatter more colourful dyes on walls, and when they got bored of it, on window panes, chortling at teachers who would open the dirty windows to shout at the hooligans, only to receive a paint-filled sock in the face, courtesy of athletics aficionado Graham Coxon. They would watch in awe as the rotating projectile followed a curved trajectory, long shiny trickles gushing from soaked wool and streaking across the sky. The few seconds of flabbergasted immobility that would struck the teachers after their imposed makeover, just before their features would twist horribly in  cartoonish anger, were also quite the sight. "We're mad." Graham giggled to himself, his cheeks hurting from the widest smile. Now they were definitely in trouble, and they agreed that the wisest choice they could make at the moment was to hide in the roomiest commercial wheelie bin behind the cafeteria until teachers and the cleaning staff would give up searching for them.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you @robin1315 @bibliomint and @btsfaneditor for helping me with this long ass chapter!


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